In manufacturing many industrial parts, coatings of a particular material to the parts need to be applied to exacting standards. In others, heat treatments of the parts has to be undertaken to precise standards as well. Any deviation away from those standards or thresholds can result in malfunctioning components. If those components are used, the overall machine in which they are employed may under-perform. Accordingly, they are often rigorously tested prior to installation. If they are not sufficient, the parts are either scrapped or remachined. Either way, the result is added cost and lessened efficiency.
One example where this is currently problematic is in the manufacture of turbines and other components used in gas turbine engines and other aircraft components. With turbines, for example, aluminide or other coatings often need to be applied. Currently, prior to application of such coatings, the retort or chamber environment in which the component is coated needs to be purged with argon or another inert gas to establish proper coating conditions. An operator not only needs to manually do this, but then manually verify it with dewpoint and oxygen measurements. These measurements require the operators to manually connect a dewpoint and oxygen meter to the retort and follow a specific procedure to assure all process parameters are achieved before proceeding. If they are not adhered to, it may cause deficiencies in the processed parts as well as damage to the measuring equipment.
Not only is this manual verification labor intensive, but prone to human error. For example, the repetition of the task throughout the day may lead to tedium and mistakes. Moreover, the manual purging and verification process occupies the operator, often precluding him or her from performing any other task, thus slowing production. Accordingly, it would be beneficial to have an automated measuring system to eliminate scrap/rework due to improper coating or heat treating environments, and to prolong the life of the process measuring equipment by avoiding human error in the manual operation. Moreover, it would be beneficial to allow for increased productivity and reduced costs by allowing the operator to monitor multiple stations and by minimizing human intervention in the manufacturing process.